Arthur Vaughan

Chapter I

One autumn day, about thirty years ago, there was much stirring about at Dyffrin. Mary, the good and fair nurse of the family, was in a state of great excitement. Two or three elderly women, deeply impressed with a sense of their importance, were busily en gaged in looking after some smoking sauce pans about the fire. One, more serious than the rest, sat upon a stool, and held in her lap something in white. It was a baby. Well ! and is not all this stirring about now satis factorily explained ? At Dyffrin was there a baby born. This baby was Arthur Vaughan, the subject of my biography. Arthur was blessed (I hurry on, for why should I loiter about his first baby days, with B their long and short clothes, teething, &c. ?) with one of the happiest and best homes in Wales. His mother was a clever, intelligent, loving woman; his father a dissenting minister, rather puritanical, but nevertheless genial and affectionate.

They were both young, in comfortable circumstances, bent upon doing much good, united in doting upon their four children, of whom Arthur was the second. The hearth of Dyffrin was ever a cheerful one, — was ever, too, a religious one; religion and love were the presiding divinities there.

Chapter II

As soon as Arthur was deemed old enough, he was sent to a neighbouring school. It was here that he distinguished himself by a fight, the issue of which was as strange as the cause romantic. A pretty little girl of nine, the daughter of the squire, used often to steal down to the company of her coevals during their merry hours of play. Her name was Marian ; and Marian, with her light flaxen hair and bright blue eyes, was Arthur proud to regard as his sweetheart. John Llewellyn, however, a boy much stronger and rougher, and older by some years than our hero, boldly denied him this privilege. " But," said Arthur, " Marian likes me, and she doesn't like you; she told me so." " I will fight you," said John, " I will ; come on." And they did fight. Arthur was very successful, and universally expected to come off victorious ; but, to the surprise of the ring, he stopped short, and, catching hold of John's hand, began to cry, and to beg his opponent's pardon for striking him.

This conduct John could by no means understand. Arthur never would fight again, though he was re proached much for not doing so. " I am no coward," he said ; " you all ran away from Mr. Morgan's dog the other day ; I didn't ; I drove him back ; but I don't want to fight about Marian ; it isn't right." When he was about ten or eleven years of age, he seems to have evinced considerable talent. He was often thoughtful, sullen and cross in his way. I find the following strange note in a thoroughly school-boy-like hand upon a copybook of his: — " I was reading yesterday in a book about hope. It was a very nice book. It said that Hope was the goddess of youthe [sic]. I am very hopeful ; it is pleasant to hope. Hope is a bright star shining in the dark heaven. Shine on bright star ! withdraw not thy light, but gladden my path for life ; and when at last the gloom of death shall sur round me, then shine brighter than ever, as on the darkest night shine most brightly the stars above !"

Here is a note in reference more especially to this period of his life, which Arthur made some time afterwards, but which, for chrono logical reasons, had better be inserted in this place: — " My father and mother lived together in love. Love was the lesson of life which they ever taught us. We obeyed them, not because we feared them, for we never had reason to do so, but because we loved them. The Bible was our great book at home. How much more do I love it now for this reason ! How ambitious our good father used to make us ! ' Set your marks high, my boys,' he used to say to William and me, ' and you will be great men yet, and will gladden your poor father's heart, when his grey hairs, the flowers of the grave, shall be gathering over his head.'" A dear home Arthur had. Happy days were these of his.

Afterwards, when grown up, when distinguished to a certain extent, and successful in the world, often, in recal ling them to the mind, would he say, " Oh ! b that they are passed, and that those years of boyish happiness and love were not continued for ever." Marian was still the object of our hero's earnest devotion. He loved her with that steady sincerity which grown up men and boys alone seem capable of feeling. The two children often walked together along the green fields of their beautiful and picturesque country, and played together with all their innocent glee ; and thus was a mutual sympathy formed between them, which but increased the more continually. At twelve years of age, Arthur was re moved to a school far from his home, — to new and different scenes. " Don't forget me, will you ?" said he to Marian in parting ; "no, never," replied Marian, as the tears flowed profusely down her cheeks, "no, never, Arthur ; but come back soon."

" I shall ever remember," he writes, " that morning when I got up very early to go from home. Ah ! how much is implied in these words ' to go from home !' The stars yet shone brightly, — scarcely a cloud was there to be seen in the sky. I felt sorry that the morning was not a dark, gloomy one. With my heart bursting within me, I kissed my weeping mother and sister and younger brother, shook hands with the servants, patted old Lion on the head, and got up into the gig. My father drove off, and I was carried away from home."

Chapter III

At the grammar school at which Arthur was now placed, he remained four years, of which I know so little that would interest the reader that I need not linger long about them. John Llewellyn still followed him here, and was still a source of considerable annoyance to him, as may be learnt from the following general account of his sojourn in this place: — " My master," writes our hero, " was a man of strange likes and dislikes, very im pulsive, hot tempered, and tyrannical. There was, however, a kind of good nature about him too, and of true, genuine philanthropy. He was the poor man's friend ; his time, talent, and purse were at the service of any good cause, and yet he was of a disposition suspicious — ready ever to think the worst — unkind — nay, even malignant in a way. By his severity and uncharitableness, he has ruined, to my own knowledge, many a pro mising young fellow.

" For the first year or two, I was evidently the object of one of my master's unaccount able dislikes. He tortured my most sensitive feelings, and annoyed me in every way. John Llewellyn, a young man of good acqui sitive abilities, but of a bad disposition, was a great favourite with him. John was a tyrant himself, cruel like Nero to the younger scholars ; and yet before the master he was the lowest of the low. Many circumstances tended to make me unhappy here. John Llewellyn made as many enemies for me as he could. Let me, however, in justice state that I was at this time blessed with many dear and sympathetic companions, whose names are associated in my mind with friendship the most pure and disinterested. We may some day hear of them again, and see them ranked among the brightest orna ments of their country.

In any case, such kind and good souls must meet with a hearty welcome in the place beyond, where kindness and goodness not only are, but are allowed to enjoy, their own reward." When Arthur was sixteen years of age he left the grammar school. His brother \i il liam had, in the meantime, been studying at Glasgow University, with much success and distinction. The bad climate of the place and hard study had, however, quite prostrated him, and, at the time to which I now refer, he was very ill at home. Towards the fall of the year he got worse, and in the spring died. Of this sad event, Arthur gives the following account : — " William was by several years my elder. His nature was lovable, his talents quick and active, his genius highly poetic. He was tall, and well made, with large, dark eyes, which eloquently spoke of the noble spirit within.

His forehead was high, projecting above the eyebrows, with a gradual curve back, like the portraits we see of Oliver Goldsmith. William was ever of a weak con stitution. Every autumn, when the brown sycamore leaves used to cover the ground, and make me sad, did he cough much, and get weak. Yet he smiled still, and talked after his wont. His dark large eyes beamed with more fire than usual, though they were sometimes dimmed by a tear, which, as it trickled down his face, still ever rosy and bright, seemed to speak something ominous to me. But I continued to trust long in his recovery, until at length that fair angel Hope passed to give room to sorrow and despair. " One winter, William had been very poor ly; but the fresh spring with her flowers was coming, and I thought that he would then again recover.

But April suns were decking the fields with verdure and beauty, and yet my brother rose not. One day he said to me, ' Arthur, I feel that I have some sympathy with God;' 'You then enjoy the noblest state that man can aspire to,' I replied; 'Would that we were all so pre pared to meet him!' William's countenance brightened up, — he laid his hand upon mine, and tried to speak, but could not, — he closed his bright, beautiful eyes, and died. That instant of time I deem the most momentous in my whole existence. I knew not what life was, — what death was, — had never realized the fact of eternity, before. There lay my brother, — my William, — dead ! The colour had departed from his cheeks, and he breathed not, — his tongue was still, — I never more was to hear his words of wisdom and of love. 'Oh!' thought I, 'is this the life of man?

To-day, living, trading between continents, — planning for the future, — willing to be the slave of ambition, of pleasure, — laughing at earnestness of thought, feeling, and action, — living himself a sham, hypocritical life, — to morrow, dead, with the world, its riches, commerce, honours, pleasures, left all, all behind!' " I laid hold of my brother's cold hand,— I fell on my knees before God. When I arose, I felt myself a different person. I then hoped to have lived that life of earnestness which I there vowed, until at length heaven's angel, death, should remove me to my William. Oh ! let me not now arouse the hell within me, by recollecting how that vow before God has been broken since."

Chapter IV

Arthur spent the year immediately suc ceeding his brother's death at Dyffrin, now a house of mourning. And yet all anxious fear was not over there; for the father began to show symptons of the same fatal malady as that of which his son had died. Mr. Vaughan's indisposition, however, was not alarming at first — was not even such as to prevent the long premeditated trip through North Wales, which Arthur and himself shortly afterwards took. The following Ossianic note is the only relic or memento that I find of the journey: — "Old Snowdon, lifting his high summit in the distance, is scarcety visible as the darkness thickens, or, if visible at all, he seems to frown like a great giant in his dark strength upon his enemy. Towards the west, large pillars of clouds rise commingled c together, high and majestic, like the castles which boyish hope delights to build.

Soon too are these clouds before the mountain winds, — as those hopes before the storms of life, — to pass away in nothingness. But now a bright steady star shines on fairly upon the rough mountain's brow. Oh ! that I had a poet's tongue to tell how fair, how beautiful, this whole scene appears." Underneath, in a still boyish hand, "Arthur Vaughan, scripsit" is written, with evident boyish pride and complacency. In the meantime, the affection which ex isted between our hero and Marian when children, had ripened into the love of a more advanced age. The walks along the green fields were continued, though now regarded with suspicion by some who in terested themselves in their intercourse. Marian's father especially disliked this inti macy between his daughter and the son of his poorer neighbour ; and, after gaining more information on the matter (of which John Llewellyn was the bringer — the Titus Oates — with some truth and much false hood), he definitely ordered Arthur never to approach his house, and never again to seek the company of Marian.

But Sam, an old and faithful servant of the family, came to the rescue in this extremity, and acted the confidential " go-between " of the two lovers. Sam had nursed Marian in his arms when she was a little, rosy child — had wept over her mother's grave while it was yet new. A good-natured, witty, fat-faced fellow was Sam. One winter's evening, well do I recollect his bringing a letter to Arthur, when Walter and I were present ; in he came to the little back parlour at Dyffrin, all white from the cold, descending snow. As he entered, the snow about his coat and face began to thaw. " How very moist I feel," said he, taking the welcomed letter from his pocket. " How very ' soft ' you look ! " said Walter (who had been to Scotland), and the tables were instantly in a roar. Arthur seems, at this time, to have directed his attention to the study of the Elements of Metaphysics.

The following note gives the general results of his disquisitions on the subject (youths of his age come very soon to results). Certainly, his manner of reasoning and thinking on it is very different from that of my friend Mr. Voluble Wordymouth (as the reader shall see), with his " Hobbes of Malmesbury"—" Hobbes "— " Hobbes of Malmesbury," and extracts from the " great Leviathan " for ever. "What is nature?" writes our young metaphysician. " What is matter but the representation of the divine mind to man ? Retire, ancient and learned sibyl, greedily tenacious of this mortal existence ! I need not thy counsellings. These caverns are dark, perhaps (rendered still more so by the shutting out of light therefrom by thy wor shippers), and the way is perplexing to my untutored mind ; but the heaven -bestowed instincts of my nature are strong enough to direct me, without thine aid, to the bright Elysian fields beyond.

God ! I thank thee for that mystic spell which, notwithstanding the many forces that would sever my existence from thine, yet keeps me to Thee, as the earth, by the great law of gravitation, is made to circle in her golden orbit, within the influence of the sun, the father of ter restial beauty and grandeur." Mr. Vaughan's health still gradually de clined. On this account, as well as on that of the late bereavement, Dyffrin was not the scene of such genial happiness and innocent merriment as of yore. And yet there was some joy there too, though tempered with grief, and for it more hallowed. As a beautiful widow smiling in her weeds is to me a most lovely sight, so also is the face of joy chastened and rendered more divine by sorrow. And as the pale father sat there in his old arm chair, a gloom was felt still to be hovering over this bright family hearth.

" But, Arthur," said Mr. Vaughan, one day, " you will be glad to join your friend Walter, in Glasgow, will you not ?" " Yes, father, very." " Profit by his intercourse : as you may suppose, we are sorry to part with you — very sorry ; but, Arthur, we want you to become a great man, as I know you will become. Let us hear often from you ; and as I have been in Glasgow myself, give me an account of your progress in the classes. Good bye, my dear boy ; the prayers of your mother and myself go with you." c2

Chapter V

Glasgow is a great, enterprising town, and such a town as Scotchmen alone could at first build, and afterwards live in with a con tented ease. The discipline of its university is good ; the general spirit of the place highly commercial, active, and intellectual. Glas gow college life, however, is very unlike the merry, sociable English one. The students are great prize-seekers, as a body, and dry college companions. Notwithstanding this, I know of no place more calculated to make a young man think, than Glasgow ; and no educational institution more calculated to fit him for an active sphere of usefulness in the world, than its university. Here Arthur studied hard, and, during his first session, was brought in contact with strange and varied opinions. The old puritanical orthodoxy of his home was, as a consequence, very much altered and modified by the religious in fluences to which he was now subjected.

At the annual distribution, on the 1st of May, he, and his friend Walter, received some high prizes ; and then, the hard work over, hastened home to Wales. Arthur had heard that his father had of late got much worse ; and thus were anxiety and joy commingled, when, on his return, he saw the trees of Dyffrin rise to view in the distance. Ay, that very morning had the dreaded hour arrived ; so that he was told, as he passed into his well known home, that his father was no more ! After the death of Mr. Vaughan, a kind and rich uncle virtually superintended the management of the bereaved family's affairs. But there was a void there, at this fire-side, which no rich uncle could ever fill. Arthur, and his sister, Fanny, often visited the graves of the two dear ones that death had taken from them.

" The afternoon," he writes about this period, " is a fine summer's one, though it is by no means oppressively warm ; the haymakers are busy in the field ; everything seems throbbing with life and beauty ; and yet Fanny and I betook ourselves to the church-yard — still, in its awfulness — beautiful, to us, as reminiscent of the spiritdom of heaven. We dressed each grave with flowers, after the good custom of our native country ; we shed many a righteous tear for our de parted friends, and then came home, much pleased, though saddened, by our walk." Arthur's own health being bad, as may be expected, about this time, he paid a visit to some friends in Plymouth, for the purpose of benefiting it. Here, he was often very me lancholy, very sentimentally despondent of all things, as the following notes seem to indicate : — " Let me, oh ! let me walk alone.

I detest this empty talking for ever : let me alone to my thoughts. Are they not too much for me ? The sea roars before me ; the sky is immense above me ; beneath me is the grass ; around me are men and women, regaling themselves after their day of work ; men and women with thousands of thoughts and feelings. How can you talk ? Let me alone, to think!" The above was probably written by our hero after having been bored for some hours by Wordymouth, while walking along the Plymouth Hoe, one mild Devonshire evening. " A DREAM. " I saw a bright youth, with eyes that beamed celestial fire; a smile was on his countenance, and I learned from it that his name was Genius. God had sent him from heaven with a mission unto World. I felt in my dream a deep reverence for Genius : I could have been his slave for ever.

" World, I saw, too. He was a big man, evidently much distressed ; proud, and over bearing in his manners. He paid much at tention to some money-bags that he held in his hand. I felt in my dream an admiration for World — I thought him great and clever ; but I could not love him; I could not be his slave, or his worshipper. " Then my dream led me on. Genius went up to World, and joyfully held out his hand and offered his services to him : ' For,' said Genius, ' I see you need them.' World frowned, ' Get thee gone, puppet,' he said, ' I am older than thou, and consequently, wiser.' Then Genius frowned also ; but in his frown there was pity. He muttered, ' He knows not what he does.' " Genius retired to the desert and wept : I saw him look up often to heaven ; he seemed to have some connexion with it.

He died ! " I then beheld World worship at a great and magnificent monument which he had erected. Oh ! how the old fellow shed tears ; how he wished the person, to whom it was erected, still alive ; how loud was he in his praises of him ! On the monument, in large letters was inscribed ' GENIUS.' ' Old fool,' thought I, ' all this is after date ! ' For the following piece, of a more cheerful cast, we are, in all probability, indebted to the band and soldiers then stationed in the Plymouth Citadel. " Great England ! how I rejoice in thee ! 1 have walked pensively over thy battlements, and have heard thy martial music play, and have seen thy soldiers march, proud of thee, in their hearts, like myself. England, thou canst do battle with the world ! In com merce, in religion, in science, thou art all supreme : thou art the Evangel of the nations ! May thy sun never set ! " Surely, no one can wonder that in a youth of nineteen, so austere now, a great reaction should soon take place.

Chapter VI

When Marian was a little girl, she was pretty and gay ; her glossy flaxen curls hung in chaste profusion about her neck, the hue of the rose was upon her cheek, her blue eyes shone with mirth and happi ness, her manners were free, her talk merry and light ; — thus Arthur loved her then with all the fervency and sincerity of his boy hood. But Marian's father sent her to school, off far to a fashionable town in England. When she returned, she was no longer the rosy, merry, little girl of the country, but a tall, delicate, though very beautiful, lady. Still they met, these two lovers, as years ago, and to Arthur the more refined lady was as dear as the bright country child. " We generally walked to gether," he writes, " about sunset; and often have I, with my hand in Marian's, looked long upon the glowing west — all gold.

We lingered about until it became dark ; we looked up, and there we saw the bright stars shining on beautifully, calmly, upon this throbbing world. The same stars gazed thus upon Leander of old. Man ! with his feelings, what is he ? He lingers for a moment here on the threshold of time, and then lapses into the infinitude for eternity !" The influence of town society upon Marian was great. The ball-room and the prepara tions necessary for it were soon matters of the greatest interest to her. Young and beautiful, she became quite a belle; one around whom all the men throng, winking or frowning at each other as the case may be. Manv of her admirers she encouraged in their delicate advancings ; and though she still thought of Arthur, sometimes with affection, yet he evidently occupied not that place in her heart which he once did, and which she still occupied in his.

Alas ! for the influences of a fashionable town ! Poor Marian, the charming girl of nature, had been converted into one of those ball-room flirts, " whose hearts," as Jean Paul says, D " are as hard and cold as the diamonds they wear;" and whose heads, one might add, are as light and empty as the books they read. At length, in her conduct to our hero, a decided change was visible. This he saw ; the distance between them widened more and more ; and at length they parted never to meet again as lovers. This took place the autumn after his father's death. First love is true and lasting ; it is long in dying out altogether — often it dies out not at all. Disappointment in it affects one's whole being, and sometimes causes a wound that heals not unto death.

Chapter VII

It was resolved at Dyffrin that Arthur should not return to Glasgow in the winter, but should remain at home to be a sympathizing companion to his afflicted mother and sister. A teacher of modern languages having stationed himself for a while in the neighbourhood, it was thought that by taking lessons with him the intermediate year, our hero would be able to make up for the neglect of these studies in his university. And as I am here before the public as the biographer merely, I doubt much whether I am bound by my duties, as such, to enter into any metaphysical argu ment regarding the almost startling, or, at all events, very sudden change of thought and conduct which now took place in our young scholar. As I have already hinted, it is probably partly to be accounted for by that reaction of feeling of which impulsive youth is so susceptible.

Then his disappoint ment in his first love, his trying bereave ments, his comparative emancipation from control, — all, without doubt, tended to bring about the end which we are proceeding to contemplate. Arthur was a young man of much energy and spirit, of a strongly sanguine temperament, and of powerful passions. He was one of those who are made by nature to be either demons of wickedness, or, with the same powers de voted to holy objects, brave and truthful doers of good. And again, Arthur's education had not been natural — had been too puritanical to be good — so that now feelings which ought not to have been so much sub dued, asserted a more than due influence over him. The fact, however, we have, that he at this time began to " sow his wild oats." At Dyffrin, Mrs. Vaughan had for one of her housemaids, a pretty, buxom girl of nineteen, whose name was Lucy.

She had auburn hair, clear bright eyes, regular teeth, and a Grecian nose, was of the middle height, but rather broad and round about the shoulders, which, according to our hero, was the only fault in her external appear ance. Now Arthur's kind attention to Lucy was more than could be desired from a young man towards a pretty girl in his mother's service. Her light and merry dis position, in truth, afforded him much plea sure in his frequent conversations with her. When dressed for the evening, with her face of health and happiness, with her hair done up nicely, and with her clean servant's cap, she came in with tea, Arthur would follow her round with his eyes ; and when she went behind Mrs. Vaughan's chair and looked so wickedly, and slightly winked at him, he used to feel such a thrill 'of joyous pleasure as he thought for the time unsur passable.

After tea, he would go out to the kitchen — " Lucy, what a naughty girl you are?" " No, no, Sir ; you were looking so serious that I could not help it." " You little devil, Lucy ; give me a kiss my dear girl. By Jove, I cannot keep away from you, Lucy." " Don't then, Sir." d2 Poor Lucy, pretty, buxom girl of nine teen ! Poor Arthur, impulsive and amorous young student ! What was Socratic mo rality, or Spartan denial to them ? Irre sistible passions drew them to each other, and they were willing to be led. Mrs. Vaughan, in time, got suspicious of her son's conduct, and when upon further observation she found that her suspicions were not without foundation, she felt that the most bitter drop of all was now added to her full cup of woe. In him, what cruelty and heartlessness, certainly. And yet, let us not judge him too harshly: a more affec tionate and dutiful son than Arthur did not exist; and yet he loved Lucy in his way then, with all the passionate ardency of his youth.

The contest within was strong. As it is easy for us, at home, to fight with great self-satisfaction those hard-won battles which our British and French soldiers are this winter of 1855 fighting in the Crimea, and to wonder at the stupidity of our generals, just for the reason that we know nothing by experience of the difficulties and forces they have to encounter, — so is it also easy, for the very same reason, for august maiden aunts to be virtuously shocked at the con duct of this young man now, and to condemn it, in a very unqualified manner, as most iniquitous. The contest within, I say, was strong and doubtful. He would love his affectionate mother, who had cherished him in her bosom from his childhood ; he would be to her a faithful, dutiful son ; but how could he desert and despise Lucy, whose heart was his ?